COCA-COLA
Solve Coca-Cola’s Facebook riddles in their latest campaign created by Wieden + Kennedy and Random and who knows what you’ll discover. Lürzer’s Archive spoke to the digital team behind this fun online project.
Image: Coca-Cola's abeachbonfire.com sitelet
As Facebook launched its new 'timeline' feature for business pages, brands have been adapting their profiles on the social networking site. Coca-Cola reached the 40.5 million 'Likes' milestone and launched an interactive campaign that urged their fans to solve some enigmatic riddles:
It’s warm and sandy, right under your feet
By this crackling fire, good friends will meet.
Fun music is played, by women and men
You’ll think to yourself, “When can we do this again?”
There’s nothing more that I desire,
Than hanging out at A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .com
The fans who solved the first riddle made their way to abeachbonfire.com, a sitelet that simulates the sights and sounds of a virtual beach bonfire, complete with crackling of flames, breaking waves and a little guitar.
Image: Coca-Cola's fallindominoes.com sitelet used sound from real dominoes and marbles
Other riddles included:
Even if they pop I smile,
It's no secret why.
The soapy rainbow swirls,
Are magic to my eye.
I love looking up at clouds,
And blowing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ in the _ _ _ .com
This led to blowingbubblesinthesky.com - a blue-sky filled screen complete with fluffy clouds and birdsong, where you can blow bubbles using your computer’s built-in microphone (yes really).
The creative team behind these sitelets were Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam and Random. The latter, an Amsterdam-based digital production company, has created interactive Facebook applications for brands such as Heinz and Adidas.
One of the latest Coca-Cola riddles is:
Set them up row after row
Knock them down and watch them go
It’s a toy that the whole world knows
The simple joy of F _ ll _ _ _ D _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .com
This will lead you to fallingdominoes.com.
Flash technology was used by digital production company, Random, who worked with designer and animator Nacho Guijarro, who did the art direction, designs and animation.
"We first thought of doing something big. Then we decided to double that!" says Senior Producer and Creative Strategist at Random, Dylan Galletly.
"Although the industry seems obsessed with Javascript and HTML5 at the moment, we simply couldn't have achieved the quality of animations we did without using Flash. Besides Flash being the biggest part of the technology we used for the sitelets, we also used some jQuery and the standard Javascript libraries for detecting mobile devices.
Image: Coca-Cola's fallingdominoes.com sitelet
"For the 'falling dominoes' We jumped into a design of 2129 domino blocks and 6 bottles. Because of Flash document size limitation we had to put together 27 different movies placed perfectly to ‘hit’ each other. When it was working smoothly we decided to add 13 marbles, 9 holes and a couple of ramps. Sound is extremely important to the experience so we recorded dominoes, marbles and coke bottles over and over until we had it perfect."
Random took inspiration from mostly childhood toys and memories and a Japanese engineering term.
"Nowadays, ‘forwarding’ has become like a currency - so we set out to create beautiful things that arrive in your mailbox (whatever form that takes) and you would share. All designed to bring you a minute of joy,” says Dylan.
"There is a term in Japanese engineering called ‘Kansei’. It is the result of adapting technology to human sensitivity and sensibility. Something has ‘Kansei’ when you get a pleasant feeling out of using it. We have tried to build experiences that you could sense without thinking too much and just enjoy them. We want people to play and to feel the joy of playing - to discover, to touch, to blow at the screen, to move in front of their camera. That kind of experience could only be brought to life in an interactive environment."
Random say Coca-Cola’s Facebook page will continue to release riddles that lead to secret sitelets over the next few weeks. Their favourite site to come is “definitely, without a doubt, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .com.” What could it be?
Image: Behind the scenes at Random, Amsterdam
